Lord Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web?

There is a rumour circulating around the Internet that the man who invented the world wide web, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is going to be given a life peerage if the Conservatives win the next General Election (1).

It was only yesterday that Murad Ahmed, writing in The Times suggested (2):

"Many have argued that he would have been awarded the Nobel Prize had his discoveries been spun out of traditional sciences"

Which honour would you rate as the higher of the two I wonder - Life Peer or Nobel Lauriete?

Notes

(1) The Local Democracy Blog http://lgiu.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/democratise-the-house-of-lords/ accessed 15 October 2009

(2) M Ahmed (2009) A worldwide waste of time...web creator admits those double slashes were a mistake, The Times, 14 October 2009

The free digital content debate goes on - draft

Libby Perves, writing in a recent edition of The Times (12 Oct 2009), argues that "the internet generation has grown up believing it can enjoy other people's hard work for nothing." She suggests that this must stop. She points to the 'backlash' that is underway in the music and newspaper industries. This backlash has been documented over recent weeks in The Times newspaper.

A major move in this direction was the plan announced by the Government to strengthen the measures outlined in the Digital Britain report to reduce illegal file-sharing. Creative industry chief executives backed this plan (The Times 1 Sept 2009), stressing the economic implications (just like Purves):

" as our film, television, publishing, music, sports and entertainment retail businesses go digital, their ability to invest in creating high quality content that millions can enjoy is fatally undermined by illegal filesharing. This has a direct impact on current and future employment opportunities for the British creative workforce, the promotion of emerging talent and on innovation in new digital content services."

Musicians, such as James Blunt and Lilly Allen sent letters to The Times supporting the proposals:

Musician James Blunt wrote a letter to the editor of the Times offering support to this viewpoint (The Times, 21st Sept 2009):

"I want to put my hand up in support of Lily Allen (Thunderer, Sept 16). She's asking British musicians to galvanise over a serious crime: the death of a great British industry - our music business.

The world over, people are stealing music in its millions in the form of illegal file-sharing. It's easy to do, and has become accepted by many, but people need to know that it is destroying people's livelihoods and suffocating emerging British artists."

Let us examine their argument. File sharing is rampant. As a consequence it is destroying the music scene and stifling innovation. Musician Tom Robinson (The Times 16 October 2009) counters both of these assertions. He feels it is 'derailing the gravy train' of the record companies, but songwriters "operate in a far more favourable environment...."

Is there evidence of innovation and creativity in the digital free economy? He thinks so. "You now need little more than a laptop and a good pair of ears to produce high-quality recordings at home...distribution on iTunes [costs] £30 ....Best of all, music and visuals can be 'broadcast' worldwide on Myspace and Youtube at no cost at all. You'll no longer make afortune but you'll certainly earn a living."

The best things in life are free

In Free: the Future of a Radical Price (2009), Chris Anderson predicts that games will soon be 'free'.

He writes (p 145):

"Games are one of the last digital products that are mostly sold [in stores] and that model is nearing its end. Just as music and software is becoming primarily an online market, so will games. And once you move from shipping atoms (plastic boxes and discs) to transmitting bits, free becomes inevitable. Over the next decade, this $10 billion industry will shift from primarily a traditional packaged goods business to an online business built on entry prices of zero."

The first step towards this zero entry price was reported yesterday in The Times[1]. The latest version of the football game, Championship Manager, has been made available for a month online for as little as 1p. This is an adaptation of the innovation introduced by Radiohead last year, when they invited their fans to pay what they wanted to download their "In Rainbows" album.

How can this make economic sense? The business strategy being employed by Eidos, the supplier of Championship Manager, is what Anderson has called "Freemium". The basic game is available at 1p+ for anyone who wishes to use it. But, those who wish to keep up-to-date throughout the season will have to pay £5 for the six downloadable updates containing "all the latest statistics, scores, competition standings, player transfers, player stats, bookings and major injuries plus much more from the 10 leading countries in Europe"

The marginal cost of distributing digital product approaches zero. The costs are all associated with producing it. But by giving the game away for nearly free will probably boost the take-up of the game and, correspondingly, the number paying for the premium service. It is also likely that there will also be cross-subsidies. Enticing players to use this free game might encourage them to purchase other products from the company. This is was how Radiohead made their money from Free.

According to Anderson (p 154), In Rainbows became Radiohead's most successful album. It sold 3 million copies (some of which were physical copies); they made more money from the downloads than they made from the previous one; it was followed by their best-selling tour with 1.2 million tickets sold.

Notes

[1] King I (2009) Honesty is the best policy, The Times, August 18 2009

[2] The title is a quote from the song "Money (that's what I want)" released by the Beatles on their 1963 LP, "With the Beatles". The full verse is: "The bset things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees, now give me money, that's what I want".

Love is free, free is love

Chris Anderson, in his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, argues that people under the age of 30 no longer expect to pay for news, music, TV, films or social networking. He suggests two models for digital media businesses to adopt if they are targeting this age group: 'freeconomy' and 'freemium'.

Businesses operating the freeconomy model, such as Google, provide content for free and generate revenue from advertising on the site. However, Anderson acknowledges that this model has lost its appeal since the onse of the credit crunch. He states "From the middle of 2008, it became clear that advertising was going to be limited. It was not going away, but it was not going to float all boats."

The other 'free' business model is freemium, in which the basic service is free and subscibers are encouraged to upgrade and pay for additional services. Fickr, the photo sharing site, adopts this model. Basic subscribers can upload images for free, but they are restricted to 100mb storage a month and access to smaller-sized images. Premium (pro-account) subscribers pay approx £17 per annum to store an unlimited amount of photos and are able to download images in their original resolution.

Spotify, which has been discussed in this blog twice previously, is an interesting case as it mixes both models. Subscribers can stream music for free, with ocassional adverts between tracks. But, by paying £10 per month, they gain access to the premium service and can listen to the music uninterupted by adverts and can also use Spotify on mobile devices.

Of course, the major battle that has raged over recent years, as a result of this changing social demand for free digital media, has been between the companies who own the rights to popular music and the generation which is using BitTorrant sites to share free copies of the music. Pirate Bay, with 20 million users, has been at the forefront in this battle. In April this year, its founders were jailed for breaking the music copyright law. Would this event signal defeat for free file sharing? It appears not. Pirate Bay has just been bought by Global Gaming Comapny for £4.7 million and has devised a new free business model. More of that next time.

Note:

The title is a line from the John Lennon song Love from the Plastic Ono Band LP (1970)

Public sector skunkworks

Last week I had a meeting with a council chief officer to discuss innovation within his authority. He characterised the council as having a 1980's culture, being very risk adverse, with a hierarchical structure and a command and control approach to management. He repeatedly used football analogies to make his point. In the innovation league, this council was mid-table.

How does an organisation such as this set about becoming more innovative?

Another chief officer in the same council suggested an approach that she has now twice tried in two different councils. This is to set up an innovation incubator, a sort of research and development unit for public sector innovation. This incubator would operate in a different way to the rest of the council. It would be more entreprenural. It would have its own culture, distinct procedures and be empowered to experiment with new technologies to the council.

This is the skunkworks approach. The term was coined at Lockhead, the US aircraft manufacturer. In the 1940s, the main factory at Lockhead was assembling bombers for the British forces. They were approached by the US military to develop and build a jet fighter capable of combatting the perceived growing threat from Germany. A small team was put together, working in secret, separate from the main organisation, with the authority to take risks and make some decisions without referring to the line of command.

According to Wikipedia, skunkworks is "widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects".

The public sector skunkworks was an interesting organisational innovation to observe. In its three-year life it gained a number of national accolades for its technological innovations. But its distinct culture and private-sector approach caused many tensions within the council which eventually led to its demise. The Lockhead skunkworks has survived for many decades. Why did this public sector version fail so quickly?

No-one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road

"We live in a surveillance society." states the Government's Information Commissioner.  He believes there has been a worrying rise in what he calls "dataveilance", by means of CCTV, credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card.

One "best practice" example of the surveillance society was recently identified by the Guardian newspaper.  It reported that operators in Westminister council's underground CCTV control room are able to watch any London street. The article continues:

"Using the latest remote technology, the cameras rotate 360 degrees, 365 days a year, providing a hi-tech version of what the 18th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived as the "Panopticon" - a space where people can be constantly monitored but never know when they are being watched."

Leeds-based sociologist  Zygmunt Bauman, in his book Liquid Modernity, suggests that the panopticon arrangement requires both the watched and the watchers to be tied to a physical space.  In Westminster case, the watched are on the streets of London and the watchers are housed in close proximity beneath the streets.  Bauman proposes that we are now entering a post-panopticon stage in history.  The watcher is " no longer bound, not even slowed down, by the resistance of space." 

Google has contributed to this post-panopticon future.   Through the medium of its new Street View product, we can all peek into other people's streets, initially in major UK cities.  For instance, it is possible for anyone using a computer or web-enabled mobile phone to obtain 360 degree views of some 22,000 miles of streets.  The mapping of Leeds Metropolitan University's Headingley campus, for example, took place in the summer as the graduation tent was being erected.  

Street View has proved controversial.  People caught on camera have complained.  Others, such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair are reported to have demanded that their property should be blanked out and hidden from view.  The post-panopticon camera it seems knows of no digital divide, it watches both  the citizen and the elite who would have previously inhabited the control-tower, overseeing the activity of the watched.

Footnote

In October 1968, on the White Album, the Beatles could tempt my generation to "do it in the road," because no-one would be watching.  If they were here today, in our liquid modernity, surrounded by dataveillance, this song would probably not have been written

I'm on the pavement thinking about the government

Once again today there is another story about the failure of public sector innovation.  This time it is the national offender management information system which was set up to provide 'end-to-end offender management'.  This aimed to share information between prisons and the probation service, replacing separate stand-alone systems.  At its inception in 2004, the estimated lifetime cost of the system was estimated to be £234M.  By 2008 the expected total cost had more than doubled.

The National Audit Office review, published today, highlights the following failures in this project

1.  Senior service management did not monitor the project sufficiently.

2.  There was no clear governance structure in place.  Roles and responsibilities were blurred.

3.  Poor programme management - the lack of an overall project plan;  poor change control and inadequate financial control

4. The need to perceive major projects as IT-enabled business change rather than technical IT projects.  The 42 probation services all had individual ways of working.  Trying to accommodate these led to requirements drift.  Processes should have been standardised and simplified.

5.  Poor supplier management.  This is an outsourced development, but it was not tendered for.  The development progressed on a time and materials basis, racking up the costs as requirements grew.  

a working class hero is something to be

Who would you say is the most new-media savvy politician in the UK?  My money is on John Prescott (JP) the former deputy leader of New Labour, who retired from the House of Commons in 2007.  He may no longer occupy a  central place in the physical political sphere, but he is leading the way in showing others how to maintain an involvement and influence in the virtual political space.

He is an active contributor to Facebook, claiming 1800 friends on the site, and is using it as a campaigning device.  It is here that he is petitioning against the bonuses being paid out to senior employees by the Royal Bank of Scotland.  He is also a founder member of the campaign to get New Labout re-elected for the forth time and has a Facebook group supporting this.  

But it was on Friday last week that I was most impressed by his use of new media.  His quick reaction to a breaking story gave him national coverage in the traditional media.  An environmental campaigner had thrown green coloured custard at Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, as he set off for a low-carbon conference in London.   This was reported on the Today programme on BBC Radio Four on Friday morning and it featured a comment about this incident from JP.  The programme had not contacted him.  He had posted this on YouTube and their editors had picked it up. 

Perhaps they are among the 1300 people who follow him on Twitter.  He announced at 5.11 AM (just about the time the Today editors were finalising the stories for the programme?):

"I've just posted a vlog on Peter and today's attack - they should arrest her"

So there we have it.  He might be retired and drawing a pension.  But by actively using Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, he is able to retain an influence in politics.  An influence noticed by the Today programme and the much-sought-after younger voters.

If you think another UK politician is a worthy contender for the tile of most new-media savvy politician, I would like to hear from you.

Note
The  image is courtesy of  Steve Punter on Flickr at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/spunter/639740500/sizes/m/

Spotify - You don't know what you've got til it's gone

I only registered with Spotify on Monday.  Since then I've become hooked.  Records that have been boxed under the stairs for a couple of decades are being played again courtesy of this virtual jukebox. How could I live without the Faces' A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse or Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the canyon?

Then today it was reported this record streaming site had been hacked, with personal data of thousands of its users being stolen.

A Spotify spokesman explained the extent of the data taken.

"Along with passwords, registration information such as your email address, birth date, gender, postal code and billing receipt details were potentially exposed," Spotify said. "Credit card numbers are not stored by us and were not at risk."

According to John Lister:

"The attack affects the estimated 10,000 accounts which were created on or before December 19 last year. Spotify found and fixed a security bug on that date, but has only just discovered people were able to exploit it."

This story highlights the importance of website users being aware of the potential for hacking of their data and the need for them to avoid using the same password on every site they use.  However, we should also expect companies, and particularly those that only operate online, to make appropriate information security arrangements.

According to the latest UK Government Information Security Breaches Survey (2008), companies still have a way to go in taking information security seriously. For instance, 52% do not undertake formal security risk assessments; 48% of disaster recovery plans are not regularly tested and 21% of companies spend less that 1% of their IT budget on information security.

Of course, users should be careful in their selection of usernames and passwords, but we should be able to expect better than this from digital media companies.

A few years ago now, the UK bank Smile was able to boast that it was "the first UK online bank to be accredited with the ISO27001 Information Security certification. That means we have an extremely secure Internet Banking service."  

It is about time that all online businesses woke up to the importance of information security and put in place the safeguards required to gain ISO27001 accreditation.

Spotify - the business model for recorded music?

Once upon a time, computer software companies developed software packages (such as Microsoft Word) and made their money be selling copies of their software to users to run on their own computers.  Then along came companies like Google who changed the underlying business model.  As we are all aware, Google doesn't charge for use of its products.  And users don't download them to their personal machines.  The applications (such as the Google search engine and Google docs) are run on Google servers.  Google's income comes from the selling of advertising space to organisations.  In 2008 quarter 4, it reported income of approximately $6 billion, up 18% on the previous year.

The music industry has been in need of a new business model for some time.  The British Phonograph Industry (BPI) and the major record labels have suffered loss of income in recent years as many music consumers have used peer-to-peer networks to obtain copies of songs rather than purchase them from record shops. The BPI estimates the industry has lost £1 billion of income in the past three years.  The online record stores, such as i-tunes, have had some success but these are still based upon the 'outdated' business model.

Now we are starting to see in the music industry a similar development to that which occurred in the software industry several years ago.  Sites such as LastFM and Spotify are streaming music for free and making money from onsite advertising.  A proportion of Spotify's income is distributed to the music companies.  It is currently experiencing a dramatic growth.  In just six months since it launched, Spotify now has more than one million users.

Will this new model work?  Will it provide sufficient income for the music providers and will it tempt customers to convert from illegal downloading to streaming instead?

The SCAMPER creativity technique

At i-camp, the problem we will be trying to solve is:

How might I commercialise our final year project?  

You will be looking at your projects from the enterprise perspective.  There are a wide range of projects in the final year group: games, animations, compositions, computer systems, strategies, etc.  Your mission in this module (starting at i-camp) will be to come up with ideas about how to develop it, change it, pitch it at a particular market as a means of making a living from this activity.

One technique that you might use to generate ideas for this is SCAMPER.  This technique allows a group of people to brainstorm alternatives and decide on potential answers.  In its way, I suppose, it is the problem solving equivalent to a group of musicians jamming their way to a new composition.

"Each letter in the acronym represents a different way you can play with the characteristics of what is challenging you to trigger new ideas:

S = Substitute
C = Combine
A = Adapt
M = Magnify
P = Put to Other Uses
E = Eliminate 
R = Rearrange (or Reverse)"(2)

If you would like to give this approach a try, the site LiteMind has a SCAMPER random question tool, which is fun to use.

Let's run through an example and explore how SCAMPER provides triggers to get our ides flowing.  Take one of last year's projects.  This project was to produce a social networking site for university students.   Let's use a few SCAMPER questions, chosen using the random generator, to help us to brainstorm ideas.

(Substitute) Can I use this idea in a different place?

The project was aimed at UK university students.  Could we target an overseas market?  This might be young people living abroad - one of the group was from Hong Kong and keen to apply it to that market.  

(Adapt) Whom could I emulate?

My favourite musician, Sir Paul McCartney, sometimes uses this to begin writing a new song. For instance, on Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard, he tried to emulate the late George Harrison on  Friends to Go  and on Anyway he composed the piece trying to sound like Randy Newman.  It seems that thinking about how someone else might carry out the task can be a spur to even the most creative of individuals!

(Magnify) What can be magnified or made larger?

One student in this group was from the International faculty, taking Spanish.  He had the idea that the 'budying' aspect of this could be amplified.  This led him to explore how it could be turned into a system for foreign students at Leeds Met to buddy up with home students who are studying their language.

(Put to other use) What else can it be used for?

The project brief was to develop a social networking system for university students.  One of the students was very interested in fashion in Hong Kong and had the idea of putting the project to this use.  He evetually settled on the idea of a social networking system for those planning a wedding in HK.

(Eliminate) What features could I understate or omit?

Under this heading the students might have discussed whether removing some of the features might have altered the project and made it more saleable or usable in a particular market.

(Rearrange) What if I try doing the eact opposite of what I intended?

What if they turned the project on its head and instead made it a system that was a networking system about students but not for students' use?  Perhaps it could be a means for tutors to contribute to an online reference for students.

I trust you now can see how one group might have used SCAMPER to generate ideas for  turning your final year project into an enterprsie.

There will be plenty of time for this verbal jamming(3) with your project team and a range of different people at i-camp.  

Notes

(1) The image of the drummer in the band Scamper is taken from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike-burns/129226539/sizes/m/

(2) Source: Passuellio J (2008) Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER http://litemind.com/scamper/ [Accessed 5th February, 2008]

(3) I hope your jamming  is more tuneful than this rare footage of the Beatles jamming!

Innovation in the public sector

How innovative are our local councils?

Text books tend to look to  the private sector for examples of innovation.  The public sector usually only gets mentioned when its large-scale technology-based projects misfire. Recent examples include the NHS patient records system and the national identity card scheme.

In reality, there is quite a lot of council innovation taking place.  The Beacon scheme, for example, is an award scheme that celebrates innovative practice by councils.  This particular scheme highlights key differences between public and private sector innovation.  Firstly, in the public sector, innovators are encouraged to share their knowledge with others.  Councils awarded beacon status are expected to devote time to diffuse their innovation throughout the sector. A second distinguishing feature of public sector practice is the complex mixture of process and product innovation present in service improvement.

To take one example.  Staffordshire Moorlands established a project to improvel access to its services in rural areas.  This innovation comprised of some new products (eg information kiosks, e-bus) and some new processes (eg a joint visiting service along with the Pensions Agency and the County Council Social Servces Department).

Most local authority innovation is what Christensen  calls 'sustaining technology'. These innovations "improve the performance of established products, along dimensions of performance the mainstream customers in major markets have historically valued." (Christensen, 1997, pp. XV).  In a future blog we shall consider an example of council innovation which might be considered to be a 'disruptive' technology.

Notes 

The image at the top of this blog represents Warhol's Light Bulbs - source http://www.flickr.com/photos/zetson/3036254720/ 

If music be the food of love, play on!

Forty years ago this week, on 31st Jan 1969, the Beatles gave their final live performance on the roof of the Apple building at 3 Savile Row, London (1). For those walking by in the streets below, taking a break from the office, on a shopping trip, or sightseeing, this must have been the ultimate free music download.

Musicians, like many others involved in the creative industries, often feel that they are driven by artistic desire, playing for love, rather than being motivated to be enterprising. It was interesting then to read an article in last Friday’s Times (2) which illustrates the innovative way in which some musicians are tackling the commercialization of their music product.

To finance their music, a new band would have traditionally approached the AR departments of the large music companies. But nowadays, faced by falling record sales and the credit crunch, music labels are not signing the number of acts that they once did.  Sellaband is a Web 2.0 website which introduces a new business model for commercializing music. Bands post their music on the site and fans are given the option to invest in them. When sufficient investors have come forward to support the music of a particular artist, the company behind the site will produce and promote the record. The band and the investing public also receive a share in any profits generated. However, not everyone is convinced that this new business model will succeed.

In a second example mentioned in the Times' article, duo Honey Ryder recognized that aspiring musicians need more than just good music, they also need a business plan. Honey Ryder took theirs to the annual music industry conference in Cannes last week looking for 100 investors to buy shares in their business.

So was Shakespeare correct when he wrote “If music be the food of love, play on” ? (3)  May be, but as the examples above illustrate, today's musicians also need to use their creative skills to explore new ways of financing their artistic endeavors.

Footnotes:

(1) It was at this performance, after playing the song Get Back, that John Lennon famously uttered the comment: "I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition!"

(2) Sherwin A (2009) Forget autographs, what about shares in a favourite pop star? The Times, 23rd January 2009

(3) Twelfth Night